Forced empathy

This first-person(s) story of the four NY Times journalists captured in Libya could have veered off in to self-absorption territory. I mean, it is gripping and remarkably revealing, but you don't become a war correspondent if you don't crave that kind of adrenaline rush. But then there are a couple of examples of real self-reflection that makes you feel these four people are just that -- people:

From the pickup, Lynsey saw a body outstretched next to our car, one arm outstretched. We still don’t know whether that was Mohammed. We fear it was, though his body has yet to be found.

If he died, we will have to bear the burden for the rest of our lives that an innocent man died because of us, because of wrong choices that we made, for an article that was never worth dying for.

No article is, but we were too blind to admit that.

[...]

We felt like trophies of war, and at a dozen checkpoints, we could hear militiamen running to the car to administer another beating.

“Dirty dogs,” men shouted out at each stop.

Over the years, all of us had seen men detained, blindfolded and handcuffed at places like Abu Ghraib, or corralled after some operation in Iraq or Afghanistan. Now we were the faceless we had covered perhaps too dispassionately. For the first time, we felt what it was like to be disoriented by a blindfold, to have plastic cuffs dig into your wrists, for hands to go numb.

It's because of journalists like these that I continue to pay a subscription to the New York Times.

Iraq lite

A third war. Another expensive one for which we don't seem to have an ending scenario for. An Italian with long experience in North Africa is not reassured.

Unfortunately, Libya did not have a powerful and US-dependent army to count on to calm down enthusiasm and excesses once the dust settled down. Nevertheless, the only course of action was to pretend that once the hateful dictator was removed, Libya, too, would find its own Road to Democracy. The party line was clear: condemn the dictator, show sympathy to the uprising, but otherwise do nothing at all, urgently.

Things, however, started to get really worrying once it became clear that, against all odds, Qaddafi had mounted a successful counterinsurgency campaign and stood a very good chance of taking full control of the country once again. We were thus faced by two equally unpalatable scenarios. First scenario: the insurgents manage to get rid of the dictator after all, but are likely to feel rather angry at Qaddafi's former friends who had not lifted a finger to help. And then, who could save us from the prospect of an Al- Chavez (see picture), a new strongman with no favours to return to the West?

Second scenario: Qaddafi squashes the insurgents. See first scenario: we would have to deal with the one we had condemned as an international criminal. Not a good prospect.

So, the course of action had to be taken to follow the adventurous route of a confused and politically troubled leader, Nicolas Sarkozy. Just before the end of the last quarter, a resolution was passed at the security council and a new war could start.

The rest we know. For the time being, we have an Iraq Lite: removal of the hateful dictator with other means than diplomacy, but this time with no ground troops - just hell from the air. At this very moment, the media are gloating in portraying and describing the feats of Mirages, Tomahawks, Tornadoes. What we don't know is what will emerge out of this mess.

And, amazingly, launched precisely on the 8th anniversary of the start of Operation Shock & Awe.